Future fashion, biotechnology and the living world: microbial cell factories and forming new ‘oddkins’

ABSTRACT

As the urgency around the environmental impact of fashion production grows, biotechnologies that engineer microbes and other biological organisms such as plants offer cleaner, greener processes and entirely new products. Bacteria and yeasts may be engineered to colour fabric, generate synthetic fibre precursors, and produce enzymes used to break down and convert waste. Biotechnology can also present as a continuation of humanity’s mastery over the natural world. This article explores how biotechnology may offer fashion – as both industry and culture – alternative ways of forming relationships with the natural world, offering a range of propositions for the role of biotechnology in fashion practice. The first theme, ‘taming’, examines how biotechnology offers alternatives that control and reduce environmental impacts within existing industry norms. Taming includes synthetic biology and microbial biotechnology to develop processes for silk and leather alternatives, and the replacement of existing fossil-fuel based fibres with bio-based equivalents. The second theme, ‘rewilding’, focuses on the role biotechnology may play in local, decentralised fashion production existing outside of industry control, within the community. Last, ‘speculating’ shows the role biotechnology may play in imagining and enacting alternative views of the living world in which the human and more-than-human entangle to form new kinships.

KEYWORDS:

• Bacterial cellulose
• biotechnology
• fashion
• kinships
• rewilding
• synthetic biology
• speculating
• sustainability
• taming

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Karyn Gonano for her editing support for this article, funded by QUT’s Women in Research support program. Thank you to the reviewers for their valuable input. This research is supported by the Fulbright Future Scholarship and the Australian Government Research Training (RTP) Scholarship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Websites and databases searched including WGSN, Business of Fashion, Dezeen, just-style, Fashion Network, Women’s Wear Daily, Vogue, and Technical Textile, initially using the keywords ‘fashion’ and ‘biotechnology’ and compiled into a database of articles

2. For a detailed analysis applying ANT to fashion, see Entwistle (2016)

3. This table is adapted from Collet (2016). It contains two meanings for the word synthetic. When used in the phrase petroleum-derived synthetic fibres, synthetic is defined as being man-made and not natural fibres. However, when discussing bio-derived fibres, synthetic is used to describe synthetically engineered fibres or organisms. Synthetically engineered means organisms or materials that have been genetically enhanced for specific purposes.

4. The reported dyeing process utilizes an engineered bacterial strain to produce indican, a stabilized derivative of indoxyl that resists auto-oxidation to indigo dye due to the attachment of a glucose protecting group. The glucose protecting group was attached using a newly discovered and characterized glycosyltransferase enzyme from the indigo plant Polygonum tinctorium (Hsu et al. 2018). Applying a β-glucosidase enzyme removes the glucose protecting group from indican to re-form indoxyl that subsequently oxidizes and forms indigo crystals on cotton fibres.

5. In partnership with Dr Peter Musk at State Library of Queensland (SLQ), article co-author Alice Payne with colleague Dean Brough ran classes for first year fashion design students on growing BC from 2014-18, with outcomes presented for public exhibition. Article co-author Luis Quijano also collaborated with SLQ in 2017.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luis Quijano

Luis Quijano is a PhD candidate in Fashion and Biotechnology at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and was awarded the Fulbright Future Scholarship as well as the Australian Government Research Training Program Stipend. His thesis is investigating bacterial cellulose as an alternative leather for the fashion and textile industry under the supervision of Dr. Alice Payne and Dr. Robert Speight. His research focuses on bacterial cellulose, biotextiles, and the intersection of design and biotechnology.

Robert Speight

Robert Speight is Professor of Microbial Biotechnology at QUT. He has a degree in chemistry from Imperial College London and completed his PhD in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. After postdoctoral studies at the University of Edinburgh he co-founded Ingenza Ltd to commercialize industrial biotechnologies. His current research focuses on synthetic biology, enzyme engineering and protein production systems for applications such as waste processing and chemical production.

Alice Payne

Alice Payne is an Associate Professor in Fashion in the School of Design, QUT. Her research centres on environmental and social sustainability concerns throughout textile and apparel industry supply chains. Alice has examined the cultural and material flows of post-consumer textile waste, and design processes of mass-market product developers, independent fashion designers, and social entrepreneurs. She is author of Designing Fashion’s Future: Present Practice and Tactics for Sustainable Change (Bloomsbury 2021).